LeMay Classic Art

06/01/2026

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06/01/2026

Sofía Jirau was born in Puerto Rico in 1996 and became an inspiration to many people around the world. She made history after becoming Victoria’s Secret’s first model with Down syndrome, helping bring more representation and inclusion to the fashion industry.

From a young age, Sofía dreamed of becoming a professional model. However, many people doubted her abilities because of her condition. Some believed she would never succeed in the highly competitive fashion world. Despite the criticism and negative comments, Sofía refused to give up on her dream.

She continued working hard, attending modeling events, and building confidence in herself. Over time, her determination and positive attitude helped her gain attention in the industry. Her appearance in a Victoria’s Secret campaign became a major moment for representation, showing that beauty and talent come in many forms.

Sofía also became an entrepreneur by launching her own clothing and lingerie brand. Through her business and modeling career, she encourages others to believe in themselves and never let society limit their goals.

One phrase she often uses is “Sin límite,” which means “No limits.” These words reflect her personal journey and the message she wants to share with the world.

Today, Sofía is seen as a role model for people with disabilities and for anyone facing social barriers. Her story proves that determination, confidence, and hard work can help people achieve dreams that others once thought were impossible.

04/14/2026

03/12/2026

He served three wars, earned 42 medals, and died pulling a wounded soldier from the fire — yet most Americans have never once heard the name Pascal Cleatus Poolaw.
He was born into the Kiowa Nation in Stecker, Oklahoma, in 1922. The Kiowa have always had warriors. Poolaw was born to be one.
He enlisted young. World War II was raging across two oceans and Pascal Poolaw did not wait to be called. He went. In the Pacific and European theaters, he moved through chaos like a man who had made his peace with danger. His first Silver Star came after he charged an enemy position under heavy fire. He did not do it for the medal. He did it because his men needed someone to move first.
When the guns stopped after World War II, most soldiers went home. Poolaw went home too. But when Korea exploded in 1950, he answered again. He was older now, but no slower. In the freezing hills of the Korean peninsula, he led assaults deep into enemy lines, fighting so close to the enemy that rifles became useless. He earned two more Silver Stars in Korea. He earned a Purple Heart too, wounded in battle but refusing to leave his men. Some men fight one war. Pascal Poolaw fought each one like it was the only thing that mattered.
By the time Vietnam came, he was First Sergeant of the 26th Infantry. The men called him Top. He had the kind of calm that only comes from having already survived the unsurvivable. Young soldiers looked at him and felt steadier just knowing he was there.
November 7, 1967. Loc Ninh, South Vietnam. His unit was moving through dense jungle when the ambush hit. Rockets. Automatic fire. Chaos everywhere at once. Men were down. The Viet Cong force was larger than expected and they had chosen the ground carefully.
Poolaw was already wounded when the shooting started. It did not slow him.
He moved toward the fire, not away from it. He directed his men through the contact. He pulled the wounded to cover. In the middle of it all, he saw another soldier fall. He went for him.
That was the moment he was mortally wounded.
He was 45 years old. He had given three decades of his life to the United States Army. He had survived World War II. He had survived Korea. He died in the mud of Vietnam trying to save one more man.
His family buried him in Oklahoma. His people, the Kiowa, mourned a warrior. The Army awarded him a posthumous fourth Silver Star, his 42nd decoration total, including five Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts, making Pascal Cleatus Poolaw the most decorated Native American soldier in the history of the United States.
There is a photograph of him that circulates sometimes. He is in uniform, chest covered in medals, eyes steady and calm. He does not look like a man seeking recognition. He looks like a man who simply could not stop showing up for others.
That is the whole story, really.
He kept showing up. In three wars. Across three decades. Right until the very last moment of his life.
Share this so someone who loves this country can learn the name they should have known all along.
~Old Photo Club

03/12/2026

Remembering
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 - October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedienne. For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975, and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

03/12/2026

"Lord. It was as cold in the room as it was outside.”
Dolly Parton was born in a one-bedroom cabin in rural Tennessee. Her dad was a sharecropper who couldn’t read. As the family grew, the older children were given more responsibilities, and Parton, as the fourth of 12 children, had to look after her younger siblings. The kids didn't even have their own beds, and they slept three to four in a bed.
Despite her poverty-stricken childhood, the songstress described her family as happy and rich in other ways. In fact, fans love Parton not only for her singing and unique glam-country queen image but also for her generous soul. She spends much of her income on philanthropy. Parton's outward appearance may be attractive, but her inner beauty is definitely captivating.

03/12/2026

Simo Häyhä was born in 1905 in Rautjärvi, a quiet farming town in southeastern Finland so close to the Russian border you could practically hear it from the fields.

He grew up hunting in the forest, learning to read terrain and weather the way other children learned to read books. By the time he was a teenager, his home was full of marksmanship trophies.

By the time the Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939, he was thirty-four years old and had been waiting, in a sense, his entire life.

Stalin sent his forces across the border expecting the campaign to last two weeks. Finland had roughly 300,000 soldiers, no meaningful tank force, and about 130 aircraft.

The Red Army had nearly three times the men, close to 6,000 tanks, and over 3,000 planes. The math was not complicated. What Stalin had not calculated was the terrain, the winter, or Simo Häyhä.

Häyhä was assigned to the 6th Company of Infantry Regiment 34 along the Kollaa River, one of the most pressured sections of the entire front.

He went to work before dawn each day, digging himself into a snow pit in darkness, packing snow into his mouth so his breath would not rise as v***r and give away his position, and waiting. He wore a white camouflage suit.

The Soviet soldiers wore brown coats that stood out against the snow like targets painted on a white wall. They also had no skis in a country blanketed in deep snow, which turned their advances into slow, exposed crawls through terrain that Häyhä had known all his life.

He refused a telescopic sight. The cold fogged the lenses. Scopes required a sniper to raise his head slightly higher, and in his hands that was an unacceptable risk. He used iron sights on a standard Finnish variant of the Mosin-Nagant rifle, and he shot with an accuracy that his commanders struggled to explain in their reports.

The Soviets eventually grasped that a single man was dismantling their operations along the Kollaa. They sent counter-snipers. None returned.

They called in artillery strikes on his estimated position. He moved. They named him. He moved. They named him Belaya Smert. The White Death.